


Tell Me a Story

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Challenge: Kitchen Table Challenge, First Times, M/M, None - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 04:40:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/794061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blair tries to cheer Jim up, using every trick in the book except the one that would work.  No sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me a Story

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Bone for issuing the challenge...you made getting my feet wet in the TS waters so enjoyable. (ooh, bad metaphor) Thank you for the encouragement - I feel so unworthy! 

## Tell Me a Story

by rgkinski

Author's disclaimer: Something about when I rule the world everything will belong to me and I can do whatever I want, but until then: I don't own these characters, PetFly does.

* * *

Blair listened at the door.  Nothing.  He was unsure how to proceed, hadn't expected to encounter utter silence. Was that good or bad?  He stepped back from the door, about to lose himself in a moment of analysis.  Then he shook his head ruefully, and thought: it's just an observation, Sandburg.  You don't need to quantify it.  It's very quiet in there.    Doesn't mean they're fully involved in the mating ritual of the average Springer guest.  Or not.

Jim listened to Blair listening on the other side of the door.  When he first heard the familiar creak of the downstair's gate, he thought his date had a change of heart.  Then he recognized the rhythm of the heartbeat, the faint scent of the antiseptic Blair had splashed on the razor cut on his left jawbone earlier that morning, and, finally, the unmistakable cadence of Blair muttering under his breath.

Jim was so used to Blair talking out loud to himself or whomever he thought was listening, he no longer bothered to shush him whether they were on duty or solely in each other's company.   Jim was getting so that he could distinguish phrases and pick out enough words to form whole sentences and get the gist of whatever it was Blair was obsessing over.  The pattern of speech was oddly identical to when Blair talked in his sleep.

He started out listening to Blair mumble in his sleep as a way of fine-tuning his hearing.  Ostensibly.  He habitually zeroed in within minutes of Blair settling into bed, his auditory senses traveling the length of the room, down the stairs, through Blair's bedroom door, under the comforter, straight to his vocal chords.

He found that this could most easily be accomplished by envisioning Blair's lips, and then "sending" his hearing to them.  He imagined his hearing as its own entity, burrowing under Blair's covers, or coming up from the box springs and underneath the mattress, searching for Blair's face buried in his pillow.

Talking in his sleep.

Yes, it was a major intrusion.  He'd convinced himself that it was a scientific way to pro-actively participate in Blair's research.  As time went on, and the opportunity to confess to this invasion of Blair's privacy seemed never to present itself, Jim accepted it as a nightly ritual, a way of tuning up, a way of dialing down.  He was the Sentinel of the Great City...surely rituals were an inevitable, permissible aspect of his mission?  Blair would understand.   Anyway, as long as he assumed a professional detachment and resisted interpreting the tumble of words, it was an auditory exercise, and nothing else.  More often than not, Blair was merely vocalizing Jim's name,  in the context of some other indecipherable jumble of disconnected, meaningless verbalizations.  Meaningless being the operative word, here.

* * *

Blair decided that the silence meant Jim and his guest had a change of plans and left the loft, or had foregone dinner and went straight for dessert, upstairs.  He was starving and pissed, and had nowhere else to go, so, taking a deep breath, he carefully put the key into the lock, turned it, and pushed open the door.  He poked his head in, pausing in the open doorway, taking one last shot at assessing the darkness and silence.  He wished he had a fraction of Jim's hearing, and a generous helping of his deductive abilities.

Not a peep.

If Jim and his date were upstairs, they were already done, hadn't yet started, or were in the process and she was as unresponsive as Blair sub-consciously hoped all of Jim's female guests would be.

On the other hand, Blair was familiar with certain tantric positions that required total, non-verbal, immobilization.  Maybe Jim knew some, too.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he caught a muted flickering reflecting off the shiny surfaces of the kitchen appliances, helped by the moonglow coming from the deck.  Blair closed the door and approached the living room.  Whoops - there he was, sitting on the sofa.  A semi-circle of lit candles on the coffee table provided a modicum of illumination.  He appeared to be alone.  Maybe she was in the bathroom.

Blair tiptoed in the other direction.

"That you, Chief,"  Jim called.  Not a question.  Blair knew Jim could recognize his footsteps, scent, heartbeat, within seconds of his presence, so he shouldn't have been surprised.  But it was such a marvel, it always threw him for a loop.  And delighted him.

"Sorry,"  Blair rasped in a stage whisper.  "I'm just gonna get some water, then I'm going straight to my room.  Won't come out for a week. Promise."

"There's nobody here, Chief.  Relax.  You're not interrupting anything. If that's what you're worried about."

"I'm not worried.  Worried?  Why would I be worried?  Should I be worried, Jim?  Why are you sitting in the dark?"

"It's not dark, " Jim answered.

Blair entered the living room, his eyes focusing on the somber tableau of Jim slumped on the sofa, his head back, eyes seemingly closed, an empty wine glass tucked between his legs. The candles surrounded a half-empty bottle of wine.  He turned towards the kitchen, where a table for two had been set and embellished with candlesticks, a casual arrangement of roses, a lone tall wine glass.  Blair went to the table for further investigation.  A large wooden salad bowl brimming with wilted baby lettuces sat untouched.  Blair noticed a pair of fat, round steaks on the kitchen island, next to the stove.  Perfectly matched filets mignon, plopped unceremoniously on the counter, still in their plastic wrap.

"Oh, Jim,"  Blair offered sympathetically.  "She stood you up."

"No.  She was here."

"Oh.  What happened, man? "

He turned to Jim , genuinely concerned.  It occurred to him that Jim hadn't moved since he entered the apartment.

"Not that it's any of my business, "  he added, hurriedly.

"She left early."

"Why?"

"Didn't say."

"She just...up and..."

"Left.  Yes."

"Wow.  I'm surprised.  Because you guys really seemed to hit it off." Blair laughed nervously.  He had only recently met this new woman in Jim's life.  She was all over him in a way that made Blair so uncomfortable he couldn't bear to be around her.  Even worse,  Jim was uncharacteristically reciprocal to her anxious familiarity.  He nearly ran out of the loft when Jim announced she was coming for dinner.

So he was curious as hell why things didn't work out.

There was a way to make Jim fill in the blanks.  One just had to be patient and supply the right opening lines.  Blair fanned himself.  "She seemed so hot for you."

"Yeah, she was.  I mean, we were.  For each other.  We kinda ... preemptorally...got a head start before we made it to the salad course."

"Okay."

"And, in the heat of passion, so to speak, I called out her name."

"Okay..."

"Only, it wasn't her name."

"Shit!"

"Yeah. "

"Major faux pas, man."

"Yeah."

"You never know which ones will take something like that personally."

Blair picked up a piece of lettuce, popped it into his mouth.

"Hmm.  That's too bad, Jim.  Did you make salad dressing?"

Picking up the salad bowl, Blair went into the dark kitchen and opened the fridge.

"It's not that bad, "  Jim said.   "Is it?  You've never done anything like that?"

Blair paused in his examination of the fridge's contents, seemingly giving Jim's question serious consideration.  Finally, he selected a bottle, shook it and his head simultaneously.

"Good God, no.  But, you know what they say:  'if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.'  Just make sure you get her name straight."

"Familiar with that one, are you?"

"Stephen Stills and Naomi..."

"Never mind, Chief, "  Jim interrupted.  "I don't want to know."

Blair poured half the contents of the bottle into the bowl, then swirled the salad greens around with his finger.  

"How 'bout some salad, Jim?"   Silence.   "No?"

Leaving the fridge door open, Blair picked up the package of steaks and examined the price code in the fridge's light.  Thirteen dollars  -  six fifty for a little mound of meat no bigger than his fist.

"So, who was the lucky gal whose name you cried, inflagrante delicto, instead of the unlucky gal with whom you were?"  Blair called out, his head back in the fridge.  "With, that is."

Jim was still for a moment, then leaned forward, poured most of the remaining  wine into his glass.

"Hey, Chief, bring that glass over here.  Help me kill this."

Blair entered the living room, the bowl of salad in one hand, the wine glass in the other, and plopped down on the sofa.  Jim contemplated the smears Blair's greasy fingers had made on the bowl of the thin wine glass, noting the degree to which he was having a little problem focusing.

Balancing the bowl on his lap, Blair tilted the glass towards Jim, who proceeded to empty the contents of the bottle into it:  a scant 2 splashes of wine.  He noticed that Jim's glass was full to the brim.

"What about you, Sandburg?  Thought you were going to make a night of it."

"I was.  Things were great.  Great night.  Swell!  Unfortunately, we got to the theater 15 minutes before the previews started. Word of advice, Jim. Never, never, never discuss spiritism with a Brazilian feminist anthropologist Ph.D. (abd) separatist who's suffering from a massive attack of class struggle/guilt because her father made millions stripmining the rainforest, which is the only reason she could afford to study anthropology ANYwhere in the world, in the first place, much less at Rainier.  And NEVER offer the opinion that spiritism is a way of metaphorically if not literally bridging the socio-economic-racial AND gender cultural divide of a society as polymorphous as your typical semi-urban underdeveloped Brazilian village.  And NEVER refer to  a typical semi-urban Brazilian village as 'underdeveloped' ."

"There's another bottle of wine on the table, Chief.  Why don't you crack it open?"

"You sure?  Okay, what the hell, I'm not driving."  Blair continued talking as he went to the table, barely taking a breath as he unfolded the corkscrew from his Swiss army knife and inserted it into the neck of the wine bottle.  "By the time the previews were over, she'd convinced me  that the importation of spiritism to Brazil in the mid-1800s was an insidious example of colonialist oppression.   Then the guy sitting in front of us said that he really didn't give a shit whether or not the colonial imperative manipulated the religious beliefs of a generation of people already mired in hopeless poverty, he just wanted to watch the movie so could we shut the fuck up."

Blair returned to the sofa with the freshly opened bottle of wine, which Jim took out of his hand.   He watched with growing uneasiness as Jim drained the contents of his glass, and helped himself to a refill.

"And did you?"

Blair looked at him blankly.

"Shut the fuck up,"  Jim explained.

"Well, I did."   Blair retrieved the salad bowl and began foraging for lettuce.  "She continued to educate me.  I said 'shush'. She left.  I assumed she went to the bathroom.  After about 15 minutes, I got up to look for her, ate some popcorn, hung around the lobby.  She never came back.   You know what would go really great in this salad, Jim?  Honeyed walnuts.  Do we have any walnuts?"

"I really don't know, Blair,"  Jim said, as he tilted the glass to his lips, drained it, and reached for the bottle.

Blair beat him to it, pretending to find the label enormously engrossing, even in the bare light of the candles.

"Yeah, this is the good stuff,"  Blair said.   "Needs to be savored.  By sipping.  Slowly."

Jim wrapped his fingers around the neck of the bottle, tugged.  Blair thought for one brief moment that he might just hold on, but that required a motive, so he relinquished his grip on the bottle.  Jim pulled it out of his grasp slowly, chuckling mirthlessly.  The bottle was slick from the salad dressing.  After he poured himself a full glass of wine, Jim brought his hands up close to his face, and examined the oily residue on his fingers.  

"Shame to let those steaks go to waste, "  Blair advised.

"What say we barbecue 'em tomorrow, on the deck.  For breakfast."

"Nah, I'll pass.  You know I don't eat meat."

"Christ, there you go again, sending those mixed messages."

"Huh?  What do you mean by that?"

"You say you don't eat meat, but you DO eat meat."

"Well, because, in principle, I DON'T eat meat.  You know,Jim, cattle ranching accounts for sixty percent of the destruction of the rainforest.  The number of acres of pasture land required for just one...."

"Sandburg,"  Jim interrupted.  " I DIDN'T know that. "

"I'm sorry.  I wasn't implying...Anyway, you're right.  That is a mixed message.  But you know what I mean.  Hey, you know what I used to do, when I was a kid?"

Blair put the salad bowl down and went back to the kitchen.  He turned on one of the gas burners, sliced a substantial piece of meat from one of the filets, and stuck it onto the end of a fork.

"From time to time in our various living arrangements,  Naomi and I didn't have furniture.  I'd put together a tent out of bedsheets and rope, and make like I was lost in the wilderness.  If there was meat on the premises I'd slice it up into little pieces, pretend it was buffalo, and cook it like this."

He stuck the meat over the open flame.

"This doesn't work with tongue, by the way.  If there WAS meat in the house, it was probably  courtesy of one of Naomi's gentleman friends, so it was usually a pretty good cut."

"Grease, Blair!

'I'll wipe it off, Jim.  Where's your pioneer spirit?"

The tantalizing smell of charred meat played at Jim's nostrils as Blair approached him with the sizzling morsel, still on the fork.

"Once you've tasted this you'll never go back to store-bought."

He gingerly plucked the meat from the fork and held it to Jim's face.  "Careful, tenderfoot, it's hot."

Hoping he wouldn't come to regret this, Jim opened his mouth, leaned forward, allowed Blair to pop the hot chunk of meat in his mouth.  He hadn't eaten all day.  It was delicious.

Blair licked the grease off his fingers.

"Good, huh? "

"Got ketchup?"

"Greenhorn!"

"Here's an idea, Chief.  Let's save the steaks for breakfast, huh? "

"She must be really special, for you to have gone to all this trouble."

"No.  She was just a date."

"Marshmallows!"

"Excuse me?"

Blair was back in the kitchen in three leaping bounds, kicking his shoes off along the way.  He made a noisy show of opening and closing the cupboards.

"No walnuts, no marshmallows!  What kind of joint is this, anyway? Oh, fuck yes!"

Just as quickly, he was back in the living room, excitedly holding his find to his chest.

"You're drunk, Sandburg,"  Jim accused.

Blair noticed that Jim had polished off the rest of the wine in the second bottle while he was foraging for marshmallows. 

"You know, Jim, if I didn't know you as well as I do,  I'd swear you were a little on the tipsy side yourself.  Are you?"

"Don't think so."

"Okay."  

Blair had a square brown envelope in his hands.  As he tore the top off,  Jim picked up the scent of cocoa.

"The first expedition I ever went on in Brazil, we were, maybe, two days out when our boat fell apart on the river.  The party I was with left me at a makeshift base camp to guard what was left of the gear while they trudged off in search of help. There was nothing to eat...NOTHING... I thought I would starve.  I kept going through my bag over and over, I must have been delirious, and finally, on, like, the third day of licking dew off of leaves and chewing ants, I found..."

He presented the package of cocoa with a flourish.  Jim saw a puff of brown powder briefly envelop Blair as a minute spray of cocoa spilled from the torn opening, the sugar crystals sparkling in the moonlight. It was beautiful.  Heightening his sight and letting it blur a little, it was downright magical.

"....this!"  Blair continued.  "Well, not this exact package of cocoa, not even this brand, but it DID have marshmallows in it.  I swear, Jim, I did not pack that cocoa in my bag."

"How did it get there?"

"Jim.  I .  Don't.  Know.  And I swear, it wasn't there the first 200 times I went through that bag desperately looking for something to eat. These little rock hard candy coated rat turds saved my life!"

Blair emptied a small pile of cocoa into his palm until a couple of tiny marshmallows fell out.  He picked one up and popped it in his mouth, offered Jim the other.  Jim shook his head.

"I suppose mashed potatoes or meat loaf might be considered comfort food for some, but for me it will always be unreconstituted hot cocoa mix with miniature marshmallows, straight out of the envelope."

He tilted the package to his lips and let a stream of powder trickle into his mouth, then slurped his tongue around his lips, causing the cocoa to smear.  Jim could hear the rasp of Blair's tongue scrubbing the sugary powder into his whiskers.

Stop that, Jim told himself.  Dial it down. Turn it off.  He reached for the bottle of wine, then remembered that it was empty.  He knew there was beer in the fridge.  He could keep drinking if he could just get to it, but he didn't trust his wobbly legs enough to stand.  Not with Blair as a witness to his inebriation.  He sank back into the sofa.

"Is that a true story?"  he asked.

"Every word.  What's the matter, Jim?  Why so blue?"

Jim chuckled.

"I'm not blue.  Tell me another one.  Tell me about the fire dancers in, uhm..."

"Fiji,"  Blair finished.

"Hey Blair."

"Yeah?"

"Get me a beer, would you?"

"Christ, Jim. What did this woman do to you?"

Blair leaned down, picked up one of the flickering candles in its glass container, and placed it carefully on the top of his head.

"In the Philippines, there's a folk dance called the Fandango sa Ilaw which requires strength, agility, athleticism, grace, a zen-like concentration, and years of training."  He picked up another candle and put it in the crook of his arm, placed another in the palm of his left hand.  "Help me out, Jim.  Put that candle right here,"  Blair indicated the crook of his right elbow.  Jim thought about it for a minute, then leaned forward slowly, careful not to jar loose the razor-sharp whirlygigs in his skull threatening to spin off in different directions. He picked up a candle and centered it on Blair's arm.  "Okay, now the other one, right here."  Blair wriggled the fingers of his upturned, empty palm.  Jim placed the candle there.

Carefully, with considerable grace, Blair walked backwards towards the kitchen table, balancing the candles on his arms and head.  When he felt the table edge against his butt, he hoisted himself into a sitting position, then squirmed about until he was kneeling on his knees.  Slowly, he began to rise, straightening his legs.  He shoved aside the table settings and vase of roses, clearing centerstage for himself.

"Blair.  The table.  Your feet..."

"You're right.  Not enough traction."  He slowly folded himself into a crouching position while lifting one leg until his foot was level with his mouth, grasped the toe of the sock with his teeth and pulled it off, then, changing to the other foot, repeated the graceful maneuver and removed the other sock.  He stretched back into an erect position, and stood on the table in his bare feet, bathed in his own candle-lit spotlight.

Jim's mouth had dropped open in awe. He finally recovered enough to say, "Toe jam.  Gross.  Yuck."

"What you are witnessing, Jim, is the only NON-Filipino man IN THE WORLD who has ever accomplished this without suffering serious, disabling injury, not to mention permanent loss of self-esteem. Do you know how long it would take to grow these locks back, should anything...heh-heh...unforseen happen?" He started to hum something exotic and high-pitched through his nose, turning around carefully, bending backwards at an alarming tilt, then undulating his abdomen in a slow belly dance.

"That's incredible, Chief,"  Jim said, genuinely impressed.

"You know what, Jim?"

"What?"

"These fuckers are HOT.  You know what else?"

"What, Chief?"

"I don't think I can get down.  You're gonna have to help me."

" 'fraid  I can't."

" 'fraid you'll have to."

"Can't do it."

"Come on, Jim!"

"I'm sorry, Chief.  If I move the room'll start spinning.  I have to sit here until everything calms down.  You'll just have to wait it out with me."

"Why's the room spinning?"

" I may have had a little too much vino."

"You've barely drank two bottles! "

"Empties are in the recycling bin."

"Oh.  Jim."

"What?"

"I'm not kidding.  I can't get down."

"The candles should burn out in an hour or so."

"Okay."

Blair blew out the candles within his reach, and just as gracefully as he had arisen, lowered himself onto the floor, dropping the candles one by one onto the table, except for the one on his head.

"There's this acupressure thing you can do,"  Blair explained, entering the living room, the entire loft now dark except for the moonlight pouring in from the deck, and the solitary candle flame on Blair's glowing head.  "Guaranteed to calm down the angry spirits of the mashed grape."

He stood behind Jim, who defied the gremlins in his head and leaned back, examining an upside down, haloed Blair.  Bad idea.  He closed his eyes, but couldn't block out a residual image of the room spinning around, filling the space with the smell of smoke and candle wax.

Blair must have extinguished his flaming crown.

"The problem with this technique, Jim," Blair said, still standing behind him, "is that, if you don't do it just right, you can kill a man by cutting off the supply of oxygen to his brain.  I need you to be very still. Don't.  Move."

Blair spread his hands over either side of Jim's face, pressing his thumbs into his earlobes, his pinkies up and under his jawbone, and his index fingers against his temples.  Then he started to blow on the top of Jim's head.

"Blair."

"Shhhh."

"I'm gonna puke.  Not kidding."

Blair stopped, crawled over the back of the sofa and into Jim's lap, facing him.

"I must not be doing it right. Let's try this."

Blair replaced his hands on Jim's face exactly as before.  He started to blow, softly.  Jim slowly sucked in Blair's breath through his nostrils, soft and warm, fragrant with popcorn and good wine and olive oil...garlic...spearmint toothpaste...cinnamon tic tacs...fresh spinach leaves...cocoa...

Smelled. So. Good.  Looked. So.  Beautiful.  Felt.  So.  Nice.

"You should just call her."

"Whooooooooo?"

"What's-her-name.  Tell her...you were overcome by her staggering beauty.  That it made you so flustered you didn't know what you were saying.  Tell her it was the name of your first love, and every time you make love to a beautiful woman, you say her name.  Like, you were calling to the gods.  You know?"

"Hmmmmmmmm. "

"Worth a shot."

"Thanks, Chief. I'll think about that.  Later. "

Much, much later.

End 


End file.
